The present invention relates to the general technology area of instant messaging. More specifically, it relates to optimizing telephonic communication in an instant messaging scenario.
Instant Messaging (IM) is widely used to communicate between two or more users since IM allows a user to be immediately notified of a message from another party. As shown in FIG. 1, a first user may activate an IM client 106 on his computer device 104 to send instant messages to a second user's IM client 110 on her computer device 108 via local area network (LAN) 102 or any other suitable wide area network (WAN).
As the exchange between two users, for example, becomes more involved, a user may elect to move to a live discussion which lends itself better to information exchange. The AOL (America Online), MSN Messenger, and Yahoo IM clients each offer a means for escalating an IM session to a multimedia session with voice using an IM embedded voice client on each user's computer. For example, each user's computer may be equipped with a microphone (e.g., 114 and 118) and a speaker (e.g., 112 and 116) for conducting an audio enabled session.
Unfortunately, the voice quality of an IM embedded voice client is typically poor. For instance, an IM embedded voice client may output sound having a lot of static and echo. Additionally, when a computer's speakers and microphone are used to communicate, the user does not have much privacy from unintended listeners. The available bandwidth may also not allow one to communicate clearly. For instance, a 33 kbps bandwidth is large enough for an IM session, but this same 33 kbps bandwidth is not large enough to accommodate audio communication.
What is needed is a technique for intelligently escalating the IM session to a telephonic device, such as an IP telephone, that is associated with the IM user and has better voice quality or some other optimum quality.